Entertainment

Hulu's 'Runaways' is bringing a big change to the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Longtime fans of Marvel’s Runaways comics might be inclined to argue that, among the company’s near-countless properties, the beloved series requires the least amount of tweaking to be adapted for Hollywood. And from the looks of the new series coming to Hulu this month, its showrunners, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, agree.

Runaways is a relatively recent addition to the Marvel Universe — debuting in 2003 from writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona — which means that unlike many of the older-school Marvel properties created by the legendary Stan Lee and his equally iconic collaborators, the property didn’t come with decades of continuity baggage or need any significant updates to get in step with modern sensibilities.

Additionally, Vaughan is one of today’s most admired writers in pop culture, both in comics (Y: The Last Man, Saga) and television (Lost, Under the Dome). To bring Runaways to the page, he took a time-honored storytelling trope – the inevitable struggle between children and their parents – and gave it a comic book twist: the Runaways band together after discovering their parents, who ultimately gave them their powers, are members of a secret cabal of supervillains.

“That experience the first time I read it was like, ‘I don't know who this Brian K. Vaughan is, but this is my people. He's speaking right to me,’” recalls Schwartz, a comic book fan who, along with Savage, has been responsible for some of the most popular and impactful youth-centric TV series of the last 15 years, including The O.C. and Gossip Girl. “The references, and all that just felt all in our wheelhouse.”

His producing partner Savage was less conversant with the medium, but responded to Runaways after Schwartz urged her to sample it. “I'm not a natural born comic book person, but I loved Brian's writing,” says Savage. “I loved all the humor, I love the strong female characters, I loved the great cliffhangers at the end of every issue, the diversity of the characters. To me it felt so contemporary and so, sort of, already of our world that we were just so hopeful that [Marvel] would be open to it.”

That Schwartz and Savage might be ideally suited for the material was something that Marvel Television was independently aware of. “Internally, we had always referred to the show as The O.C. in the Marvel Universe,’” laughs Jeph Loeb, the head of Marvel Television, “because of the way that Brian K. Vaughan created the characters and created the dynamic between young adults and adults and the problems that are fairly universal ... as we like to say in the ad line, ‘every teenager thinks their parents are evil, and what if they were?’”

Eventually a general meeting was arranged, and both sides were thrilled to discover that Runaways was foremost in everyone’s mind. “What we look for [in showrunners] first and foremost is passion,” says Loeb, who was impressed by “the fact that they love this material, and the way they spoke about it, and not only the willingness but sort of an insistence that Brian Vaughan be involved.”

Schwartz and Savage immediately recognized the connective tissue between the types of youthful dramas they’ve specialized in, and how that translated into a superheroic context with Runaways. “We view it as a coming-of-age story, we view it as a family drama – all those things first, before the other stuff,” says Schwartz.

“I think that's true of the Marvel brand, that we're not as invested in the cape and the cowl as we are in the individuals,” agrees Loeb. “And that goes all the way back to Stan Lee, who from the very beginning has always said to us – it's kind of his mantra – ‘If you don't care about the person inside the mask, you're never gonna care about the person wearing the mask.’”

Because the series ultimately remains extremely faithful to the spirit of Vaughn’s source material (while also developing the Runaways’ “evil” parents more significantly with their own complex and conflicted personalities), many of the young actors headlining the cast admit that they found significant inspiration in the pages of the comics.

Rhenzy Feliz

Image: Hulu

“The second I got the audition, before I even went into the room, I knew what I was auditioning for,” says Rhenzy Feliz, who plays – and is a dead-ringer for — the Runaways’ resident genius and lynchpin, Alex Wilder. “I did all the research that I could, got the comic book. I didn't get to read all of it before the first audition, but I got to read enough of sides and enough of the beginning to understand what type of character they wanted for him.”

Conversely, actor Gregg Sulkin admits that his character, Chase Stein, “is the one from the comic that's probably changed the most. I read it because I like Marvel Comics – who doesn't? – and obviously, I wanted to be prepared for the show and understand what was going on.”

Gregg Sulkin

Image: Hulu

Sulkin says, “I wanted to be truthful to the character in the comic book, but at the same time, have my own twist on it. Because at the end of the day, they hired me to play Chase and they obviously want, along with all of us, our own flavor. [We're] staying true to keep the story true and to keep readers of the comics happy, but we want to develop it a little bit more.”

Virginia Gardner’s light-powered character Karolina Dean has also had a makeover – it’s not clear yet if she maintains her alien comic book origins, and her famous parents now head a prominent, cult-like religious organization – but remains true to Karolina’s personality traits.

Virginia Gardner

Image: Hulu

“The more you read or the more you watch, you see that the characters are so not what they seem to be, at first glance," says Gardner. "It’s fun playing a character that people expect to be a certain way, and then taking it another direction and really surprising people.”

Gardner was also taken by the romantic entanglements among the Runaways, which in her case will tread new ground for Marvel characters on TV, with the first on-screen LGBTQ relationship between two of its heroes (although Netflix's Jessica Jones does feature one of its supporting characters, Jeri Hogarth, with both a wife and a mistress, and Agents of SHIELD previously introduced gay hero Joey Gutierrez).

“As soon as I read the comic books, I was really excited about Karolina and Nico’s relationship,” says Gardner. “I think it’s something that we haven’t seen in the Marvel Universe before, so to be able to play that is really exciting. We get along so well and we had really good chemistry, right off the bat. We’ve been really excited about the romantic interest here, for a long time.”

Lyrica Okano

Image: Hulu

“I totally trust in what the writers have done with our dynamic,” agrees Lyrica Okano, who plays the Runaways’ resident goth sorceress Nico Minoru. “I think it’s gonna read well, and I think people are gonna react to it pretty well." She notes that the show is breaking new ground with another aspect of her character, too: "It’s not everyday that you see a Japanese American character who’s a witch, that’s a goth girl that doesn’t give a fuck and doesn’t listen to her parents. I think it’s really cool.”

Most changed for the series was the youngest – and strongest – Runaway, Molly Hayes, now aged up from around ten to 14 years old and redubbed Molly Hernandez to reflect actress Allegra Acosta’s Latina heritage. Molly has also been made an orphan being raised by the Pride members the Yorkes, and thus a foster sister to her fellow Runaway Gert.

Allegra Acosta

Image: Hulu

“Since Molly's adopted by the Yorkes, she's also very curious about her family,” says Acosta. “In the comic book, they're very much there and very much aware of who she was, and she very much had a connection with them, but now it's a completely different side of the story. So you can see how curious she is and how driven she is by being wanted and knowing about her roots and where she comes from. She's also driven by the dilemma that she loves her sister and is in love with chemistry and wants to be accepted by the older kids.”

Ariela Barer says her role as the snarky and notoriously socially aware Gert is both true to the comics and felt like a perfect fit.

Ariela Barer

Image: Hulu

“This sort of social justice is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been passionate about since I was exactly her age, 16,” says Barer. “I remember when I was little, I was this like major environmental activist, but then turned into social activism. I was very passionate the way she was in high school, and like shoving it in people’s faces. I was just like, 'how could you not care? How could you not just want a better life for people?' I love that mentality she has. Anything that could be construed as anger, it’s just like a fiery passion for wanting a better world. I think she’s the coolest thing in the world for that.”

But that's not even the coolest aspect of Gert's character, Barer points out: “Also, she has dinosaur!”

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